Snowflake, a cloud-based data platform, posted first-quarter revenue up 33 percent from a year earlier, marking its highest growth rate in two years. Its shares also jumped more than 50 percent in five days.

Judging by the current mood alone, Snowflake appears to be emerging as a leading company breaking through the so-called "SaaSpocalypse" narrative that SaaS demand will shrink as companies can build SaaS software directly with AI.

Snowflake has strengthened its AI-centered growth strategy over the past few years.

According to the Fortune Board, Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy (스리다르 라마스와미) said the Cortex Code coding agent is currently used in more than 7,100 accounts, and that accounts using the agentic application Snowflake Intelligence more than doubled from the previous quarter.

Ramaswamy presented a "control plane" as the next step. He said the control plane will become a new browser, a space where users go beyond querying data and coordinate work across multiple applications.

Ramaswamy also stressed that usage-based pricing is realistic for AI pricing models.

He said, "Revenue is generated only when customers actually use it. You earn money by proving value." He added, "When AI agents start handling work instead of people, companies that rely on pricing based on the number of employees will lose the justification for their premium." He also said that unlike now, when hundreds of SaaS applications are proliferating, integration will take place around major applications in the future.